


Letter Never Sent

by BlackDog9314



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Gen, Poet Castiel, Writer Dean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-11
Updated: 2016-03-11
Packaged: 2018-05-26 00:17:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6215971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackDog9314/pseuds/BlackDog9314
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He is floating. The water hitting his skin is stinging and hard and he is floating. His feet don't even hurt from the ten hours he was on them the day before, and the water on the tiles is a song in ears that are numb.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Letter Never Sent

 

Dean is hefting the plastic grocery sacks on one arm and closing the Impala's door with the other as the thought hits him out of nowhere, as if plucked from the soft violet of the chill January air itself.

_Today it's been one year since Cas and I met._

Dean smiles to himself as he takes the stairs up to his apartment, thinking idly to himself that he should text the guy, send him the Yevgeny Yevtushenko poem he'd read the day before and see if Cas likes it as much as he had.

That evening Dean watches TV until he falls asleep, worn-out from the long day of work he's gotten home from, and forgets to text his friend.

*

_'I don't know if yr aware since ur not on campus anymore, but I figured I should tell you. Castiel Milton passed away. They found him in his apartment last night, sent out an email this morning. I know you guys were friends.'_

The text is from Charlie, pinged across his phone screen at seven am, and Dean is in bed wrapped up in his favorite old blanket. It's soft, the blue and red checkers worn and warm against his bare chest. There is faint light shining through the curtains he got from Good Will haphazardly covering his window, and Dean thinks that he is dreaming.

He sits up rigidly, his shoulders tense as he reads the text again, and then a third, fourth and fifth time.

 _'You must be mistaken.'_ he texts back fifteen minutes later before he gets in the shower, turning the dial so far to the right that the water is scalding.

He is floating. The water hitting his skin is stinging and hard and he is floating. His feet don't even hurt from the ten hours he was on them the day before, and the water on the tiles is a song in ears that are numb.

He's been to Cas's campus apartment more than once, helped him move in the potted plants he so carefully takes care of, the boxes and boxes of books on meditation and flower-growing and Buddhism and the Tao of Pooh and an old Bible and Charles Bukowski's collected poems.

Cas texted him not five days before and sent a picture of a new lamp he'd gotten from a yard sale, its moth-eaten shade lacy and ridiculous in the light of the yellow bulb beneath it.

Cas sends him the poems he writes and Dean gives him feedback.

Cas drinks tea and is a certified hypno-therapist and isn't yet twenty-four.

Cas is a student at the university Dean graduated from not one year before, and he is thinking of writing his first work of fiction and has been enlisting Dean's help in formulating a plotting strategy.

Cas is endless when he speaks, a lifetime of experience and thought and sorrow and shared memory wrapped in a body too young for all that it contains.

He's known Cas for a year and they have so much to talk about.

Dean realizes the water is cold when he shivers so violently his teeth clack and catch the inside of his lower lip, drawing coppery blood that he swallows without thinking. He gets out of the shower and checks his phone.

_'The funeral is this Friday. I'll fwd you the email.'_

*

Castiel's Facebook page is flooded with posts he's been tagged in, direct messages to his wall, shared pictures from his friends.

Dean wasn't aware how many friends the guy had until he's spent an hour reading every godforsaken word he can stand.

There is a post from someone who delivered pizza to Cas's house three years ago who stayed and talked to him for almost two hours about what, he can't recall, remembering only that he knew Cas was something special. _'You shouldn't be gone.'_

There's a post from a girl who met him in Colorado where they became hypno-therapy certified together. _'Your energy was like gold. I am lost.'_

There's a post from one of the English professors who had Cas in class.

There's a post from an ex-girlfriend.

There's a post from someone who went to rehab with him.

_'You were amazing.'_

_'You were bright like a star.'_

_'You got me through the worst time in my life.'_

_'Your work was beautiful, and so were you.'_

There is a picture posted by one of Dean and Castiel's mutual friends, a group picture taken of the poetry class they met in last January.

Cas is standing near the back of the group next to Dean with his usual sleepy smile, one arm around Dean's shoulder and the other around Meg's, and they all look so very happy.

The sun is shining through the tall window beside them, painting everything gold and light and effervescent, making immortal each delicately-shaded smile, every soft wrinkle in their clothes and by the corners of their mouths, highlighting every displaced strand of hair.

Castiel's smiles were never fake, never insincere things that he put on for a camera or a compliment he felt obligated to accept, and Dean wishes now that he had treasured them for what they were, for the ticking clock that no one had heard in time.

Dean still remembers clearly the day that their professor took that picture. It had been the last week of their poetry workshop, a bright April day where they posed together in the library foyer. He remembers how warm Cas's hand had felt on his shoulder, how happy he had been to be so close to Cas, how good it had felt to bask in the mellow glow he always seemed to radiate.

He'd been certain their friendship would last for years to come. He'd been certain he had time.

*

Dean is driving to the funeral being held in Castiel's hometown, and he feels as if he's a few minutes from passing out for the entirety of the three-hour drive. Outside the window grass that's finally green once more passes him by in a verdant blur, the overgrown edges of the highway almost alive again with the advent of a cold, late Spring.

As Dean drives he thinks of something Cas once told him when they were alone, a time he remembered from his successful stint at rehab.

“ _The flowers grow back each year, and I told myself that even if some part of me had to die that year I would make it to the rebirth, too. Like they always do. When I wanted to give up, I had to remind myself of that. Suffering is only temporary, it's something we let happen. I had to suffer to grow. I was winter, but I knew I wouldn't be forever.”_

The church he arrives at is tall and white, its stained-glass windows beautiful and frightening in their rigidity, their sheer size. They stretch three stories up, and fierce-looking angels adorn them, fiery swords in their hands as their garments glow white and their eyes burn holes into Dean as he takes a program from an usher in a navy blue suit.

He isn't expecting the volume of people who are present for Castiel Milton's funeral service, but supposes he should have considering the overwhelming responses to the news of his death on Facebook.

There are no available seats soon after Dean arrives, and people have taken to standing against the walls to attend the service. There are people in suits and people in long faded dresses and people who smell like cigarettes and booze and people who have the Ohm symbol tattooed on their wrists.

It is Castiel's brother Michael that speaks in-between the prayers and the Easter hymns, and Dean feels so small, so far away from the blonde coffin draped in white linen and the huge flower arrangement beside the pulpit.

Michael is crying most of the time, but he manages to speak clearly enough to say what he has written down on a clipboard he holds with shaking hands.

Castiel was scheduled to graduate university in less than three months. He traveled extensively and was a former heroin addict and organized a weekly meditation session on campus for all interested and volunteered at the nursing home in town, and none of this makes it into Michael's speech.

Michael says that Castiel was a devout Christian and Dean wants to laugh at the absurdity of the lie and ends up crying instead.

He hasn't cried since he was told of Cas's death, and now he can't seem to stop. It's fitting, he supposes, to cry at a funeral.

_What do I do?_

_Where are you?_

_You said energy doesn't disappear or die, it simply changes form._

_Where are you now?_

Dean doesn't know, and when the funeral is over he almost leaves without speaking to anyone, even though he sees many of the students he and Castiel met in their poetry class amongst the mass of people.

But it is another of Castiel's brothers that draws Dean to the cluster of people congregating at the front of the church, one he recognizes from a photograph Cas showed him a few months back.

“You're Dean Winchester,” Gabriel Milton says tearfully once Dean has introduced himself.

“Yeah,” Dean says brokenly, not sure how Gabriel knows that.

“C-Cas mentioned you,” Gabriel says with a sob barely-contained.

“He did?” Dean leans in as his heart pounds painfully in his chest.

“He said y-you wrote great stuff. Said you were a friend.”

“He was my friend,” Dean confirms, feeling light-headed. He reaches out weakly for Gabriel's hand. The other man takes it without comment, and they clutch at one another like that, silently crying in front of a flower-decorated altar.

“Do they—do they know what—how he—?” Dean can't bring himself to ask the question that's been on his mind since he was given the news.

“No,” Gabriel shakes his head sadly, tears dripping from the end of his long nose. “They said when they—when they found him it just looked like he'd—like he'd fallen asleep at his desk. He had his books open, like he'd been studying.”

“Oh, god,” Dean says, picturing it and wishing desperately that he hadn't.

“We don't know what happened,” Gabriel says as he swipes roughly at his reddened eyes.

Dean shouldn't have asked.

“He was my friend,” Dean says again, knowing how pointless the words are now.

“He loved you,” Gabriel said. “He thought you were something special.”

His hand is hot and damp around Dean's and Dean tightens his grip as he bows his head, shaking hard.

“ _He_ was something special,” Dean says when he finds the strength to look up at Cas's brother again.

Gabriel nods sadly, “I know.”

Dean spends the next fifteen minutes telling Gabriel about Castiel's plans for a book that will never be written, describing outlines and techniques for fiction-writing as if they matter.

*

When Dean gets home from the funeral he drinks until he can't stand up from the sofa.

_I'm not special. You were special. You were like a fucking comet. You were as tall as the church they said you loved. You were a flower on the side of the road among the leaves of grass._

_You were here and now you're not, and you were something special._

_I thought I had time to tell you so._

_*_

A year later Dean is working as a cashier in the express lane. It's Tuesday night and he's been there since ten am.

A young mother comes to his lane with a few cans of soup and a gallon of milk. Her baby is strapped across her thin chest in a soft, grey carrier, and Dean smiles tiredly at the woman and begins to ring her up, bagging her items with care. She looks as exhausted as he feels.

Habitually, he asks her politely, “How old's your baby, ma'am?”

She turns so Dean can see the small face pressed sleepily to her shoulder, “He turned a year old two days ago.”

Dean is nodding absently when he sees the baby's eyes, and he stops what he is doing.

They are a familiar shade of blue, a soft almond shape he's never forgotten.

Dean feels as if all the air has been punched from his lungs.

The woman laughs at his reaction, “Yeah, everyone says he looks right through you.”

“He feels like an old soul,” Dean says, barely hearing his own voice.

“I've been told that before, too. Well, thanks, we'll probably see you again soon. We just moved here,” the woman says with a smile before she takes the baby's fat arm and makes him wave at Dean. She then takes her bags and leaves.

Dean doesn't realize he's crying until he reaches up and feels the wetness on his cheeks.

*

 

_You were so wonderful, and it's bittersweet to write this to you, because half of me believes on some level that you will answer me, and I know you won't. I guess now I only hope that you aren't lost to me forever._

_All the love in the world, my sweet, sweet friend._

 

**Author's Note:**

> Because my heart is still broken.  
> Rest in peace Jason. I miss you so much.


End file.
